Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass is deleting her text messages, thus defeating efforts by media organizations to obtain them as government communications subject to public records requests, according to the Los Angeles Times.
The Times reported that it had been unable to obtain Bass’s text messages concerning her overseas trip to Ghana, during which the L.A. fires broke out, because they were automatically deleted and the city had not retained them.
The Times reported:
She and her office have said she was in constant communication during that period. But it’s impossible to know exactly what she was communicating, because her messages were not saved, according to a city lawyer.
“Her phone is set not to save text messages,” said the lawyer, David Michaelson.
Michaelson said that there is “no requirement that a city official or employee save text messages,” despite the fact that the city’s own document retention policies dictate that most records should be kept for at least two years.
The Times suggests that Bass is violating both state law and the city’s own administrative code.
Breitbart News has written to the office of Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman to ask whether he intends to investigate or pursue legal action against the mayor over her text messages.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
